


Mythical Creations

by khilari, Persephone_Kore



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: mythical beasts, surprise transformations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 06:32:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2611874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khilari/pseuds/khilari, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persephone_Kore/pseuds/Persephone_Kore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After experimenting with a Heterodyne device Agatha finds that she's not only lost in a strange world but also a phoenix. Finding that Tarvek is also there as a dragon and Gil as a griffin is only the beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mythical Creations

* * *

Agatha groaned and attempted to sit up. Sitting…didn’t work out that well, her legs felt…wobbly. Or something. As if they were bending in the wrong direction. She pulled herself to her feet anyway and opened her eyes. She was in what appeared to be a field with some very small trees in the background. _Bonsai hedge maze_ flitted through her mind and was dismissed both because the trees didn’t seem that well arranged and because it didn’t exist. There was something strange about her vision too…she seemed to be seeing _all around_ herself, including behind her. Was this an out of body experience? She stretched an arm out to look at her hand and found herself looking at a red-gold wing. She shrieked, startling herself further when it came out high but melodious, and then tried to calm down. Okay. An out of _her_ body experience.

Further investigation of her new body, made easier by a rather long neck, revealed that she was a bird. Her legs were long, like a crane, giving her an easy stride. Her feathers were golden red. If those trees were actually the normal size she was _enormous_. And she really needed to figure out where she was, which would be easier to do from higher up. Spreading her wings and attempting to grin with a beak, Agatha launched.

Her first few flights were short, involved a lot of flapping, and deposited her on the ground in a position even what she suspected was a rather elegant form couldn’t make graceful. But once she had the hang of it she soared, ridiculously light for the size of her body. She tried to work out how the aerodynamics were working, and the attempt at heterodyning came out as a beautiful, eerie fluting.

She was gliding around the base of some mountains, a barren rocky area, when she saw the dragon. It was only a little bigger than her and deep red with a long elegant tail ending in a double frill like a koi’s tail. There were graceful frills along the side of its head, too, and along its legs, and the edges of its wings were scalloped. In fact, it was such a frilly dragon that it took Agatha a moment to notice the square, powerful body underneath it. Since the dragon was the first living thing she’d seen aside from trees she flew down towards it wondering if it could talk. It occurred to her shortly after that to wonder whether she could talk.

“Hello?” she tried.

The dragon’s red brown eyes went wide and it smiled widely at her with a mouthful of teeth that would have been more alarming if she hadn’t got used to Jägers. “Agatha!”

She reared her head back on her neck in surprise and then bent forward to nuzzle him, the movements coming naturally to her body. “Tarvek,” she said. “I should have realised you’d have come through as well. Have you seen Gil?”

“I haven’t seen anyone,” said Tarvek, tilting his head towards her. “Do you know where we are?”

“No idea. But if we came through Gil probably did, he was just as close. We should look for him.”

Agatha launched again and circled, looking down at Tarvek. “Come on,” she said impatiently.

Tarvek ducked his head, neck dipping into a U as he pulled it in. “I’ll walk.”

“You won’t be able to keep up,” said Agatha, impatiently. “Or can’t you fly? Like Franz?” His wings were bigger than Franz’s, and her own aerodynamics shouldn’t work either, but dragons were pretty heavy.

“…I don’t think I can fly,” said Tarvek.

“Okay,” Agatha circled a bit more and landed. “I’ll walk for now and take off to look around when we reach a likely place. It’ll probably save energy anyway.”

Agatha wasn’t sure whether it actually saved energy — walking was easy, but so had flying been. As if her new body was strangely weightless. “What am I, anyway?” she asked, after a few hours of walking and occasionally taking off and circling to look for…something Gil-like, she guessed. Something brown, maybe, since she and Tarvek seemed to have colours based on their hair.

“A phoenix, I think,” said Tarvek. “You’re beautiful.”

Agatha couldn’t actually blush in this form, but she was flustered enough to decide it was time for a short flight.

It was when she was on the ground again that something the size of Tarvek dived out of the air at them. Agatha turned with a squawk — which somehow came out a rising third — and Tarvek hissed and went low to the ground. The creature landed, just past them, and turned to look back at them. It was a griffon. Large and golden-brown, shading darker on the lion hindquarters. Lean and muscular, with a fluffy brown mane that seemed to be equally fur and feathers and a tail that ended in something more like a bottle-brush than a tassel.

“Gil?” said Agatha.

“It is you!” said Gil, bounding forwards. It was bounding, too. The stiff bird legs of his front half didn’t work properly with the lion paws of his back half, so that on the ground he moved with an awkward bouncing motion. He stopped in front of her, suddenly uncertain, and Agatha nuzzled her face into his soft mane.

Gil gave a sigh of relief and shifted close enough that she had to bend her neck, and his eagle head settled over her shoulder for a moment. She felt a light tug at one feather as he apparently preened it by reflex. 

"What were you going to do if it hadn't been us?" Tarvek asked. He didn't precisely nuzzle Gil so much as shove his shoulder with his nose. 

Gil shrugged his wings. "Hope you were friendly anyway, or else take off again and hope to outfly you."

"I don't think you could outfly Agatha."

"We could find out," said Gil, flicking Tarvek's flank with his tail, and giving Agatha a playfully challenging look. "We should see if we can see anything that looks like a way back, anyway. Why were you two on the ground?"

"Tarvek doesn't think he can fly. I went up a few times to look for you."

Gil craned his head to one side and then bounced forward to stretch out one of Tarvek's wings. "Hmm--"

"Hey!" Tarvek shook his wing indignantly and leaned away, which didn't help, or at any rate, didn't stop Gil. 

"The proportions look perfectly reasonable.... How dense _are_ you?"

"Now hold _on_ a minute," said Tarvek. "How should I know? Do you see a dragon sized scale around here?"

"We could probably build one," Gil said, then peered at his talons. "...I think. Um, we could probably manage a balance, at least."

"We don't have any tools, or any materials," Tarvek pointed out. “Also you don’t have any way of knowing how much anything _else_ weighs to measure me against."

"We know I can fly," said Gil. "It'll be a bit rough, given what we have to work with, but an estimate is probably sufficient."

"We could try it," said Agatha. She looked at her wings and then shrugged them and lifted a foot instead. "We'd just need something like a seesaw, we could make that with a couple of trees if we got the balance right."

"You couldn't just take my word for it?" Tarvek muttered. 

"Now we're curious," explained Agatha. "Aren't you?"

"Not especially," said Tarvek. "You two can fly if you want. It's not as if you won't be able to find me again when you want me."

But why wouldn't he want to know? "What if the way home turns out to be up in the air?"

"Look, I'm pretty sure _none_ of us _should_ be able to fly," said Tarvek, flicking his head up. "I have _no idea_ what the limitations are here and I don't especially want to find out by _falling out of the sky_."

"This isn't like my flying machines," said Gil, rolling his eyes. "Not that the calculations on them aren't perfectly good too. But you're a dragon, you're not going to malfunction."

"Earlier today I would have said I wasn't likely to _spontaneously turn into a dragon_!" Tarvek's wings twitched, and all his frills ruffled. It was a remarkable effect, somewhat spoiled by Gil trying to peer analytically under the opposite wing this time.

"I'm a phoenix and I haven't malfunctioned yet," said Agatha. "But if you're not going to fly whether you can or not then there's no point in trying to weigh you. And you can stop poking him, Gil."

"We could do a _quick_ test," Gil said, letting go of Tarvek's wing -- and promptly tackled him instead. Tarvek flattened again but jarred sideways; there was a quick scuffle and some flying fur, and then Gil was in the air again, circling, looking more rumpled but pleased with himself. 

Agatha glared at him. " _What_ do you think you're doing?"

"I thought so!" Gil crowed. "It didn't feel like he outweighs me by that much."

"Get down here and I'll test it again by standing on you," said Tarvek, glowering up at Gil and scuffing his claws on the ground to clean the fur off.

"Come up and get me," Gil invited him. 

Agatha swept a wing over her face. "Gil, _really_."

Tarvek took a deep breath and huffed it out through his nose, then looked as surprised as Agatha felt when a jet of flame shot up. Gil backwinged hard, almost turning a somersault in the air, and Agatha could smell singed feathers all the same.

"Gil!" Agatha called.

"Wulfenbach?" said Tarvek at the same time and in almost the same tone, putting a claw over his nose.

Gil flipped back upright in the air, and landed next to Agatha, who quickly grabbed his wing in her beak to look for scorched feathers. It looked like it was only a few and not badly, thank goodness. "That was pretty cool," said Gil, sounding fascinated and trying to lean forward to look down Tarvek's nose. "How did you do that?"

"I don't know," said Tarvek, leaning away from him. "Stop that. Are you trying to get your eyeballs fried?"

"Let me look, if I get set on fire I'll probably regenerate," said Agatha, pushing forward herself.

"That is _not something I want to test!_ " Tarvek yelped. As a dragon, it came out rather growly, but it was still definitely a yelp.

"Can't see much anyway," Agatha grumbled melodiously. "It's clouding over." She glanced up and then squawked and let go of Tarvek's nose. 

The "cloud", which had lowered nearly right down on top of them, folded its wings and put its feet down. "It's you, isn't it? What in the _world_ have you done this time?"

"Father?" said Gil, craning his head so far up it was nearly backwards. "What did _you_ do? Come through as Castle Wulfenbach?"

The enormous bird... harrumphed. Agatha was fairly sure of this, at least, despite it sounding enough like thunder to reinforce the bizarre impression that Baron Wulfenbach had actually come through as a kind of feathery stormcloud. "Remarkably, we have avoided that complication." He eyed Agatha. "I must admit my first thought on discovering myself in this... shape... was not _camouflage_."

"You're not nearly as hard to spot on the ground," said Agatha, feeling rather miffed that he'd managed to sneak up on her by accident. "And if you came through on purpose _you_ probably have more idea what's going on than I do. Was it a portal? Do you know how to get back?"

"There was an anomaly remaining where you disappeared." He sounded disgruntled. "I was unable to locate a corresponding one in the vicinity after I came through, but I may have some ideas. Have you seen Zeetha?"

"Zeetha came through?" asked Agatha, looking around as if she might have shown up. She noticed Tarvek was low to the ground and very ruffled, but nothing green had suddenly arrived.

"We haven't seen anyone but each other," said Gil. "Not even any native monsters or humans or anything."

"Zeetha _disappeared_." The Baron sounded even more annoyed about this. "As we're all here, it seems most likely that she's here _somewhere_ , but I haven't seen anyone else either."

"We'd better start looking again," said Agatha.

"What exactly were you doing instead?"

"Tarvek can breathe fire," said Gil. "We were trying to find out how."

The Baron looked at Tarvek. "I suppose he would." One taloned foot shifted on the ground, and a boulder broke up and trundled downhill. "He does look like a dragon. Mostly."

"I _am_ a dragon," said Tarvek, standing up straighter but not managing to unfrill. "... probably. You're not planning on travelling with us, are you? I'd sooner not be stepped on by a large bird."

"You look like a dragon derived from a chlamydosaur," the Baron said rather analytically. "And I wasn't planning to _walk_. Were you?"

Tarvek glared at Gil who was just opening his beak and said, "...No."

Gil smirked around the edges of his beak.

"Come on, then." The Baron stood and lifted his wings, then paused and looked down at them. "Did you arrive together, and do you still know where you were?"

"We didn't," said Agatha. "I was beside a forest, Tarvek was on a hillside, and Gil found us here."

"Coordinates," said the Baron, "might be helpful. If we can find the locations again. Thus far it _looks_ like there's no rhyme nor reason to the whole thing besides _hair color_ , but a pattern may yet emerge."

"I was in a large river," said Gil, sounding disgruntled. "Fortunately I dried out quickly, but I don't think finding the river will be hard at least."

"I can still find where Tarvek was, I think," said Agatha. "I'm not so sure about where I was, but it wasn't too far away."

"That's helpful. I located my point of arrival as precisely as possible as soon as I stabilised."

"Of _course_ you did," muttered Gil, feathers ruffling.

The Baron eyed him for a moment. "Naturally. I did come in looking for you."

"Let's start by finding where Gil was," said Agatha. "We can look out for Zeetha as we go. Or she might find us. Does she know you look like a cloud?"

"I can't imagine how she would. She vanished into it looking for _you_."

"Maybe we should paint you," said Agatha. "You'd be really easy to spot if you weren't grey."

The Baron regarded her balefully. "Let me guess: pink."

" _The pink was not my idea._ "

"We could probably find some blackberries, but not enough to stain all of him," said Gil. "Maybe we should write 'Baron Wulfenbach' on him."

"In light of the apparent lack of wildlife," the Baron said drily, "if you come across blackberries, you might do better to eat them. Let's go find your river."

The Baron took off first, nearly flattening them with the downdraft, but able to glide easily almost as soon as he was aloft. Gil followed him up, looking small next to him, more graceful in the air than on the ground in this form. Agatha glanced at Tarvek. "Will you be all right?"

"I'd better be," said Tarvek, huffing carefully away from her. He spread his wings and jumped, flapping awkwardly.

Agatha rose after him, trying not to fret. Fortunately, while Tarvek did not precisely _relax_ , he did seem to discover after a few exhausting minutes that his dragon body -- like the rest of them, evidently -- came with some instincts for flight instead of thrashing right out of the air. Agatha did relax, soaring up on a convenient thermal and scanning the ground below (what of it was not obscured by enormous, slightly fluffy grey-white wings) as she circled.

The river was, as Gil said, not terribly difficult to find again, although they flew longer than Agatha was expecting. When they reached it, Tarvek angled down -- she looked over in alarm, but it seemed to be deliberate -- and touched down in a shallow glide, plowing up a massive shearing splash before he settled into the current.

Agatha, aware that she was feathery and also possibly related to fire, settled next to it instead and tried to form a mental map of the place to mark the co-ordinates.

The Baron landed on the opposite bank and looked over at Gil. "You seem to have an aquatic dragon here."

"They don't _have_ me," said Tarvek, flaring his wings out to float on the surface. "But I think I might be aquatic. This is nice."

"Goes oddly with the fire breathing," said Gil.

"You do look very comfortable," said Agatha.

"Do you have gills under those frilly bits?" Gil asked, stretching his neck out to try and poke at Tarvek. This got him splashed with one wing hard enough to leave him spluttering.

"Well, now _I'm_ curious," Agatha said, as the Baron swabbed Gil with a wingtip. Proportionately this didn't leave him very wet. 

Tarvek huffed -- with a very small plume of flame, to her fascination -- and reared up halfway out of the water to rest his forelegs on the bank. " _You_ can look if you like."

Agatha stood on one leg to lift frills aside with one talon, carefully in case there were gills underneath. She found a line of narrow slits down near the base of the neck. 'You do have gills,' she said, peering at them. The scales got smaller around the edges and inside she could see little slices of pink flesh. They looked terribly vulnerable and she smoothed the frills back over them rather carefully.

"I'll have to try them out." Tarvek nuzzled her, with a slightly defiant glance in the Baron's direction, and then pushed off the bank and submerged.

Agatha bent over the river to try and follow his movement. She could see him below the surface as a red shape -- for a moment she was reminded of a koi carp. She could also, for the first time, see her reflection. A little wobbly, but the water had mostly settled in Tarvek's wake. She was delicately shaded red-gold, shaped somewhat like a heron with an upright body and long legs, with a long plumed tail and a crest of three feathers curling up from the top of her head.

"Yes, you're very pretty," the Baron said drily. "I don't suppose you have any idea what to look for Zeetha to have turned into, besides green?"

"I wanted to see what I'd turned into clearly," said Agatha with dignity. "And there doesn't seem to be any pattern."

"Hm. Well, if she turned into something from home, it should at least be distinctive...."

"If she turned into a mythical Skifandrian creature, I have even less idea what to look for," Agatha said, "but if she's the only thing moving besides us--"

A streak of green the size of a small hill catapulted into the Baron, who let out a rather unmusical squawk and twisted his head all the way around to lash out before abruptly checking himself. "Oh, it's you."

The green bird who had to be Zeetha stood up on his back -- Agatha was impressed that he merely looked a little put out at this rather than smushed, because she wasn't much smaller. Zeetha appeared to be mostly modeled on a vastly enlarged peacock, with plumage that shimmered from metallic green to blue and copper as she moved. Agatha had to blink several times before realising that Zeetha's head appeared to belong to a saluki and her legs to a lion. Also both green. "Aren't you supposed to be harder to sneak up on than that?" Zeetha asked, sounding immensely pleased with herself, and then pounced again off the Baron's back to encircle Agatha in her wings. "There you are!"

"Hi, Zeetha," said Agatha, reaching up to preen her slightly. "I'm really glad you didn't pounce on me this time."

"Aw, I wouldn't have landed as hard." Zeetha bumped her with her nose and Agatha felt slightly relieved that the doggishness did not translate to licking her. "Not when you're tiny. But that was irresistible."

Once Tarvek had emerged from the water they set off to find the remaining entry sites. They hadn't been flying long when Gil batted the end of Agatha's tail. When Agatha turned to retaliate he folded his wings and dropped several metres and then swooped off around Klaus. Agatha chased him with an arpeggio laugh and eventually managed to tug his tail with her beak, at which point he turned and chased her again. The Baron took being used as an obstacle and hiding place surprisingly well and, to Agatha's relief, Gil didn't tag Tarvek. She wasn't sure whether she was worried about Gil knocking the still unsteady dragon out of the sky or about Tarvek trying to hide the fact he couldn't keep up by flaming at Gil instead. Thankfully both were avoided, even if Gil nearly managed to startle _her_ out of the sky at one point (she avenged herself by nipping his tail next time).

The probably foreseeable consequence of that, Agatha thought ruefully, was that she and Gil wore themselves out rather faster than anyone else. She tried gliding, finding herself weightless enough that it was almost restful although she'd still like an actual break soon. Gil simply came in to perch on the Baron's shoulder.

"Aww," said Zeetha. 

The Baron twisted his head around briefly to glance back. "Heh. It's been a long time since you were small enough to do that."

"You're pretty comfortable for a roc," said Gil.

"Oh, is that what he is?" Zeetha asked, speeding up slightly so as to make an inspecting circle. 

"Almost certainly," the Baron responded. "Giant bird -- with no obvious admixture -- and a disconcerting urge to try to feed you and Gil an elephant."

"If we see an elephant, please don't," said Gil.

"It might not be a bad idea," said Zeetha. "We're not seeing much in the way of food here."

"No," said the Baron. "I've been wondering what happened to it."

"There's the forest I came in by," said Agatha. They'd already seen the hillside and Zeetha's arrival point. "I think that's everyone's, unless you want to show us yours."

"Hm. Not that far, actually, but you must have long since left the area when I arrived." He circled for a bit and then started a steep climb.

Agatha sighed and followed him up, rather envying Gil his perch. It was tempting to try and perch on Zeetha, but that would probably get her chased with a stick for lacking endurance. It was high enough that she could get a better idea of the land from here, there was Tarvek's hillside, there was Gil's river. No roads, no buildings. No places that looked suspiciously on fire, which might have been a way to track dragons or phoenixes.

The Baron _finally_ stopped rising and resumed circling instead. "This is about the right altitude." A gusty sigh. "I am not sure this tells us much." 

"You came through this high in the air?" Tarvek asked. 

"Somewhere around half the height could have been a problem."

"How high can you go?" asked Agatha. "I don't think the rest of us could keep up -- unless we all sat on you -- but an overview of this place might be useful."

"I don't believe I'd hit my limit yet when I spotted you." The Baron eyed her. "Grab on, then. Not you, Zeetha."

Agatha dropped onto the opposite shoulder to Gil and Tarvek circled looking dubious before settling between the Baron's wings. It was rather comfortable, the Baron made a quite fluffy roc, and Agatha was distracted examining the feathers. "...ah, soft edges, shaped like an owl's feathers, that's how we didn't hear you coming..." she muttered.

Below them the world spread out, the forest going from bonsai to green moss, the rivers to silver threads, she could see all the places they'd been in relation to each other, but beyond that, surrounding the countryside they'd travelled through...

"Is that ice?" asked Gil.

"It looks grey," said Tarvek.

It did, and the colours and landscape seemed to fade into it more than be overrun by it. Near it the trees seemed to get shorter and lumpier.

"Is it just me," said Tarvek, quietly, "or do the places we came through look a little bit brighter than anywhere else?"

"It's not just you." The Baron circled higher. "There also seemed to be slightly more oxygen and higher air pressure where I came through than at lower altitudes, which is distinctly peculiar. And it's not just those locations. There's a subtler effect around the paths we took between them." He looked over his shoulder at them, then faced forward and set off at high speed. "Let's go see if we can get a look at the grey areas."

It looked like they were riding for now, which was certainly faster. Zeetha could keep up with the Baron over long distances but the rest of them would have had trouble. However, despite the speed the grey areas proved elusive. They seemed to travel through countryside -- quite pretty countryside -- without ever reaching a faded part.

The Baron finally picked out a thermal and climbed up again. "That tears it," he said. "The boundary is moving. _What_ were you lot working on?"

"Well, there was this ancient Heterodyne device we were trying to get working," Agatha began.

"That would be your first mistake," observed the Baron.

Agatha sighed. "It was very interesting, but it didn't seem to work on any power source, so I decided to try drinking from the Dyne and seeing if I could transfer energy to it."

He turned his head right around again -- clearly the feathers were not his only owl-like feature -- without missing a wingbeat. "And _none of you_ considered the possibility that this might not be a good idea?"

"...We were a little absorbed," Gil admitted.

" _Clearly,_ " the Baron muttered. "Right, then. You drank out of a river that comes from nowhere and fed energy to an ancient device made by your crazed relatives, and it created a portal that turns people into mythical creatures and scatters them across a land that may be somewhat... ah... without form and void until they _get_ there. And I can't even bring myself to be _surprised_."

"It _is_ interesting, though," said Agatha, poking her head out further to look down at the now larger landscape. "We seem to be creating the world as we go, which is... well, _the possibilities_... we don't even need to build machines if we can figure out how to focus it! We can build _anything!_ " She laughed. "We're like the gods of this place."

Zeetha flew by and smacked her with a wingtip.

"Ow, Zeetha," said Agatha indignantly.

"Nothing good _ever_ follows a sentence like that from a Spark," said Zeetha, pointing a paw at her. "Calm down."

"She has a point, though," the Baron said. 

Zeetha growled. "Do I need to bite you?"

"You can try! Just because you caught me once--" 

"You can't dodge me properly now, you'd drop them." 

"They can all fly."

"That's very reassuring," said Tarvek. "But I'd rather you put us down first."

"As it seems logically impossible to outrace the effect and observe the boundary directly," the Baron said, "it actually might be best to try the converse: land, and see what happens if we stay in one place long enough."

"I'm in favour," said Tarvek.

"That does sound logical," Agatha agreed.

"That lake up ahead looks nice," Zeetha suggested. "Or at least like it's going to be. And there's enough room to land on one side without tearing up a bunch of trees." There was indeed a lake, attached to the river Gil had landed in but further upstream, in the foothills of some mountains that probably had not been concealed by mist but really hadn't been there when they started flying toward them. 

The Baron angled downward toward the lake -- the mountains grew steeper and craggier every time Agatha looked at them -- and landed on the shore. Agatha and Gil hopped off and fluttered to ground; Tarvek went over his shoulder straight into the water and spread out his frills in it contentedly.

Agatha dipped her beak into the lake for a drink and then stretched her wings and wondered whether she could imagine a toolkit. One useable by a phoenix.

She stretched out one foot and stared at it, flexing the toes to experiment with their dexterity. At least she could balance easily. But she was so used to hands! Even tentacles would make manipulation easier... er... perhaps she shouldn't spend too much time contemplating tentacles. What should she do in terms of handles? And what, for that matter, did she _want_ to accomplish? She wouldn't mind just tinkering with something, but you couldn't tinker with a tree. 

...Well, maybe you could....

Twenty minutes later, Agatha had a spear, which was disappointingly uninteresting. Three hours later, there were four Sparks involved and they had replaced a substantial swath of the nearby forest with a complicated nest surrounded by spring-loaded defences and, in the aquatic section, traps for thus-far nonexistent fish. 

That was when the elephant charged them.

Agatha squawked and threw the spear at it, which was really a waste of a perfect opportunity to test the catapults, and when that didn't do much besides annoy it Baron Wulfenbach picked it up.

"Well." He looked over at Gil and Zeetha. "Are you sure you're not hungry?" 

" _I_ am," Zeetha said. "Although not quite enough to eat it raw."

"I should think we could get a fire going," Agatha said hastily, remembering Krosp's attempts to feed her a raw rat. Although the Baron was not quite _that_ pleased with himself. "...Herr Baron, have you been imagining elephants this whole time?" 

"They did keep coming to mind."

Tarvek proved useful in starting a fire, but dubious about actually eating the elephant.

"What's wrong?" Agatha asked.

"Nothing! They're just kind of cute when you're bigger than them."

"Oh, yeah," said Gil, watching Zeetha turn the makeshift spit. "You used to have a pet one, didn't you?"

"I still _do_. Although he's more of a giant mimmoth." 

"Wait," said Agatha. "Where are you keeping him?"

"Ah...." Tarvek's frills ruffled. "The Refuge of Storms. Actually."

"...With what's left of the Sparkhunds?" 

"It's a good place for weird pets and if he doesn't live with me, nobody will try to kill him to get to me!"

"Sensible," said the Baron. "Although evidently I should have spent the time thinking of a rhinoceros."

No rhinoceros had turned up by the time the elephant was cooked and Tarvek was hungry enough to take his portion regardless of finding elephants cute. It tasted pretty good to Agatha; she wondered whether they were all carnivores or whether they should imagine some vegetables next time.

After dinner they were feeling sleepy enough to be glad of their nest. Agatha and Gil set up the tripwires for the catapults and came back to find the sleeping area somehow lined with enormous fluffy down. “…He’s surprisingly paternal as a bird,” she muttered to Gil.

“I think it’s travelling alone with me this much smaller than him,” Gil whispered back. “Without an army, I mean.” He sounded a little embarrassed but a good deal more smug.

A splash from the river distracted Agatha and she turned her head to see Tarvek curling up just deep enough in the water for it to be covering his wings.

“Are you really sleeping in there?” she asked.

Tarvek stuck his head out to answer. “It’s comfortable and I won’t set anything on fire.”

Agatha looked at their wooden ramparts and admitted to herself that this might be a good idea. And if he was comfortable there she didn’t need to talk him out of it. “Good night, then,” she said, and settled down with her head under her wing.

The next morning she woke up feeling rested and, surprisingly, not at all confused at finding herself a phoenix even half-asleep. Around her birds were singing and she felt a bit like singing herself until she woke up further and remembered there weren’t any birds. Or hadn’t been. They were here now, flitting between branches in the nearby trees. Maybe she’d expected to wake to bird song without realising it, or maybe being in one place had let the area develop enough reality to start on wildlife no one had spent hours thinking about.

It wasn’t until she stretched that she realised Gil was no longer asleep next to her. Giving her wings a few lazy flaps to get her circulation going she stood up and looked around, finding him perched, still and intent, on the shore of the lake. Every line of him said “cat watching fish” so Agatha wasn’t surprised to reach him and find three fish lying on the ground next to him. They were about the size she expected fish to be, until she adjusted for being somewhat bigger than an elephant and realised they were enormous. They were also beautiful, rich jewel tones with huge fanned tails glittering at the tips. Agatha was just about to ask Gil about them when the water rippled and Gil dived forward, ducking a head already sleek with water under the surface.

He came up holding one of Tarvek’s ear fins, while Tarvek followed him up with an unimpressed expression. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“Catching breakfast,” Gil said, indicating the fish. “It’s not my fault there was a dragon in the way.”

“Maybe you should leave fishing to someone who can swim,” suggested Tarvek.

“I don’t see any fish you’ve provided,” said Gil.

“I just woke up,” said Tarvek. “Bet I can catch more than you.”

Gil dropped back into his fishing pose. “You’re on.”

Well, that solved the problem of catching enough fish to feed the Baron and Zeetha, Agatha thought. She left them to it and decided to stroll along the lake shore and see what else had turned up. The discovery of watercress led to her laboriously weaving a bag out of some long grass in order to carry it back (once she’d started she was too stubborn to give up) and she arrived back to find a fire burning and fish sizzling over it on sticks.

"If we set it that close, the framework will catch fire," Gil was objecting.

"We can soak it first." Tarvek began carrying off what appeared to be a newly constructed spit system. 

"I still think we just need to expand it slightly and possibly--" Gil sighed, then looked over. "Agatha!"

"I can see why you want a more efficient system," Agatha said in amusement, surveying two small mountains of large fish. "Did you have fun?"

"I think we might have to make a net and put some of them back in the water so they don't spoil, unless we want to eat them raw or set a lot more of the forest on fire," Gil said. "What have you got?"

"Watercress," Agatha said, then looked at her bag. "...And, sort of, a net."

Getting a large bag of jewel toned fish (which made a stunning display swimming around in close quarters) set up in the water proved easy enough. Setting up a giant double rotisserie for fish proved harder, and by the time it was done the ones skewered on sticks were smelling delicious.

It turned out even as a phoenix Agatha's mouth could water. She looked over at the nests. Remarkably, the Baron and Zeetha had slept right through all the morning's activities. Evidently they were not early birds. "This is weird," she said. "Zeetha's usually up before dawn. Actually, she's usually getting _me_ up before dawn."

"Yeah, my father too," said Gil, looking at the sleeping roc. "They did more flying than us, yesterday, I guess. And he was flying everywhere looking for us."

"I guess, not being part of the experiment, they probably worried more." That did tend to be tiring. "Do you think we should wake them up or wait until more of the fish are ready?"

Gil grinned around the ends of his beak. "I think we should wake them up while we have the chance. If we wait they'll probably wake up without us."

...Well, if they were _really_ tired, Agatha rationalized, they could always take a nap later. (Her inability to imagine the Baron actually doing this was only semi-relevant.) She went over to the nest and climbed up to Zeetha's muzzle, then curled one talon under and pressed the rounded part against Zeetha's nose. "Beep!"

Zeetha jumped to her paws, feathers ruffled and ears flicking. "Glad to see you decided to wake me rather than skipping morning training," she said, once she'd got her bearings, poking Agatha with a paw.

"Breakfast!" said Agatha quickly, fluttering away.

"You're not getting out of it that easily!" Zeetha said, spreading her wings. 

Agatha landed on the opposite side of the mostly-cooked fish. 

Zeetha paused. 

Agatha assiduously avoided looking either smug or hopeful. 

Zeetha... licked her chops. "Okay," she conceded. "Breakfast."

The Baron arrived in a single careful step looking ruffled, while Gil bounced over looking pleased with himself and shared a smile with Agatha. Fortunately there were plenty of fish to placate the late risers. Agatha suspected Tarvek of being responsible for their existence and he'd evidently imagined them delicious. She hadn't managed to provide whole mountains of watercress, but there was enough to give the fish a garnish that added a slightly peppery taste.

"You've been busy," the Baron said, looking rather startled when they hauled out the net bag of confined fish to resupply. Agatha was fairly sure this was actually approving even if he sounded grumpy about it. Gil launched into the tale of the epic fishing contest but was interrupted by another charging elephant. 

Except that this one was arriving sideways, skewered by what appeared to be a very muscular unicorn. 

Agatha more sensibly lunged for the catapults this time, but the Baron pounced first.

He pulled the elephant off the unicorn's horn, revealing it to be a long and twisted like a narwhal's, in this case with blood trickling down the rivulets to stain a sleek black mane and pure white coat. "Hmm," he said. "Another mythical beast which suggests someone from our world. Considering the colouring and the random acts of violence I think we can take a guess. Gil?"

"Dupree," said Gil, sighing. Tarvek, whose frills had been draped loosely around him like silk scarves while he ate, ruffled hastily and took a step back towards the lake.

"Yes, it's me!" said DuPree. "I've been looking for you guys."

"And attacking elephants in the process?" said Gil.

She flicked her head, sending droplets of blood flying. "Something about them just makes me want to charge. So why resist?"

"If I were looking for someone," the Baron remarked, "I think I would find having an elephant on my forehead somewhat hampering."

"Does everybody here just hate elephants except me?" Tarvek grumbled.

"Yeah, well, I still found you," said DuPree, stretching her head towards him. "Should have figured you'd be a stupidly fancy dragon."

"I suspect she's a karkadann,” said the Baron. "They are known for attacking elephants. They're supposed to find birds calming." He placed a claw over her. "Right, DuPree?"

DuPree looked at the enormous talons and then _way_ up at the Baron. "Yep," she said. "Totally calm. Why are you a giant fuzzy owl?"

"Because Agatha's ancestors have once again outdone themselves for strange effects on reality."

DuPree looked around. Agatha was not altogether sure how she decided that a karkadann looked dubious, but she did, even before DuPree said, "Doesn't seem like their decorating style."

"Nonetheless," said the Baron. "It was caused by an experiment with one of their devices."

It occurred to Agatha that he probably didn't want to tell DuPree she could make things reality by imagining them here. Come to think of it Agatha didn't really want to tell her that either -- even accidental effects of someone that bloodthirsty being here sounded a bit worrying. They'd really better find a way home. Which they had been trying to do _anyway_ of course, but they hadn't been gone long enough for Agatha to seriously worry Mechanicsburg couldn't get by without her and while she wouldn't want to stay here forever it had been sort of... nice. Just as a break. Phoenixes didn't seem to have too many responsibilities.

"If the portal's still open for people to come through looking for us we'd really better figure out a way back before we're up to our necks in whatever Jägers turn into," she said.

The Baron shook his feathers. And let DuPree up, whereupon she immediately headed for -- somewhat to Agatha's surprise -- the remaining watercress. "I haven't had any further useful ideas," he admitted. "Almost the opposite. If this place has been extending around us, and the three of you arrived at some distance from each other, then it's possible no location here is actually any 'closer' than any other point."

"Are you saying we can't get back?" she asked.

"Of course not." His feathers ruffled again. "...But I'm having some trouble coming up with _how_."

Agatha tore at the rest of her fish and then rinsed her beak before preening. The Baron's hypothesis was plausible. There was no obvious relation between the points of arrival. The expansion property suggested that they might have essentially created the place from a point as they arrived. The new arrivals weren't regular enough _not_ to shift the midpoint by any calculation method she could visualize.... "Well," she said slowly, trying not to give DuPree ideas, even if the pirate seemed absorbed in the watercress. "Maybe we can look at it another way. If it doesn't matter where we are, maybe we should just concentrate on getting back from here."

Gil perked up. "That could work," he said. "We just need to make sure we're all concentrating on the same thing." He brushed a patch of ground clean with one wing and started scratching an equation there.

Tarvek went around the other side of them from DuPree and disputed Gil's calculations. Agatha, for some reason, found herself staring at the river. 

"Try not to give it any properties of the Dyne," the Baron said, surprisingly quietly for such a large bird. "Else if this takes more than a day we'll have to find Sturmvoraus somewhere else to sleep."

"Oh!" said Agatha. "I probably should give something those properties, though."

"Er," said the Baron. "....To fuel the transition. I suppose I see your point."

"Not the river, though," she agreed. "I'll make a new spring somewhere it won't run into it." She wouldn't want to spoil Tarvek's sleeping spot or the fish. They'd been very tasty and she didn't need them trying to eat her in return.

"How much of it do you need?" he asked. "Couldn't you start with a basin? Come to think of it, assuming you can imbue something with the properties of the Dyne, do you actually need to when the device is clearly still operative back home?"

"I don't know," said Agatha. "Do you think I could transform just a basin? Everything that's turned up so far has been either a natural feature or alive, no tools turned up when I was thinking about them."

"...It might be worth a try. You could try to think of it as a puddle." She was fairly sure he was trying to frown. "But if not.... Do you want a lift to somewhere with sufficient geological separation?"

"Thank you, but I can fly myself," she said. "And I'll try the basin first."

"As you like." Although once she had a scooped-out basin filled with water, he kept watching her until she rather testily suggested he go help Gil and Tarvek concentrate, because he certainly wasn't helping _her_. What he actually did was go and start cooking DuPree's elephant before leaning over them to see their equations, but at least it was an improvement.

The basin hadn't worked by noon when, after a lunch of elephant, Agatha sat down to read the equations. It looked like they would be requiring energy in order to open the portal on this side, even if it was remaining open on the other side.

"You're really trying to recreate the Dyne?" Gil asked, when Agatha admitted her answer to concerns about where the energy would come from.

"I think I'll have to," she said. "Don't worry, I drank from it to get us here." She had a feeling none of her companions except DuPree followed that advice.

The flight into the mountains was pleasant -- Agatha had opted to fly out from the centre because it was easier to find the type of valley she was hoping for somewhere it didn't exist yet. She swooped up thermals feeling vaguely disappointed that she'd soon be back in a world where she couldn't. _Hands_ though. It would be good to have hands again. The valley, a bare stone one deep enough for water not to run down from it, appeared ahead of her and as she swooped lower a formation like a cracked egg showed among the jagged rocks at its bottom. It really made no sense, she thought, landing carefully among the rocks around it, and had made even less on her world. Here it existed because she'd imagined it and hopefully a spring with the impossible qualities of the Dyne would as well, but in a world where things weren't brought into being by imagination how did anything like this form... well, that could go in a disturbing direction if she thought too much about it. The important thing was to focus on the possibility of water here.

As she picked her way to the eggshell rocks, she could smell something like a thunderstorm. 

When she eased between them, it grew stronger, and there was water. Just a trickle, bubbling up from the stone and falling back like a tiny fountain; bright water, the blue-white of a child's drawing, glowing like lightning. 

It looked deadly, like something you shouldn't even touch, and just the sight of it made her thirsty.

Agatha looked back the way she'd come. It had been a long flight -- the boundaries seemed to have been spreading as they slept. They should have started imagining a portal long since. 

She dipped her head and drank from the spring, feeling the shock of cold water all the way down her long throat and swirling in her belly. It fizzed against her and seemed to race straight through into her blood, lighting her nerves, chasing away the fatigue of the flight and firing her brain. She didn't need tools. She was a goddess. She could make anything, anything she pleased-- 

She rose into the air rejoicing, buoyant, and arrowed back faster than she'd come. She _would_ make a way home.

Below her the others were forming a pentagon around a point, even DuPree with her head down and concentrating, one of the Baron’s claws hovering over her absentmindedly. In between them was a shaky circle in the air, pallid like a soap bubble about to pop. Agatha arrowed towards it, letting out the power inside her with a high note an opera singer would be proud of.

Lightning arrowed down among them and they looked up, startled but not dismayed until they saw her. Gil threw himself into the air, tail lashing wildly as he flew towards her. Zeetha ran, long bounding strides like an ostrich, wings spreading without leaving the ground, making herself a wide, soft spot to land on. But Agatha wasn’t falling and Agatha did not need to be caught. She was floating, weightless, watching the portal light and swirl, still capable of anything at all.

The blue light surrounding her was turning red, when she looked at the ends of her wings the feathers were flaming, soft and beautiful, subliming into a flame almost the same colour as they were. The energy seemed to expand inside her chest, as if flames were there too, and even then she couldn’t manage to be afraid.

The flame swept her painlessly, and she _was_ flame, she was glory, she had never felt more alive. Tarvek looked from her to the river and then launched into the air as well, and the Baron spread his wings, and Agatha felt one moment of fond exasperation at all of them for dropping the portal. Couldn't they see what she was doing?

That was all right, though. She seized the portal herself and it flared gold. 

Gil looked back and then he got it; he'd had faith in her before she did; he hurled himself back down, nearly crashed into Tarvek on the way and shouted something Agatha couldn't hear over her own song. 

She dived into the pool of gold, and everything was light. She stopped there, floating, momentum forgotten, a flame, a halo, holding the way open.

They all got themselves together and turned around to follow her through.

Agatha found herself swimming in slime. This was quite a comedown from being on fire, golden and brilliant, and also meant she couldn't breathe. She pushed herself upwards, kicking her way through the water, and pushed her head into a bubble of air underneath a... small ivory dome? Now that her head wasn't under the gunk she could hear voices.

"Is that an _egg_?"

"Yes, and I think everyone's said that now." Tarvek, sounding annoyed, and worried underneath it.

Agatha looked up at the dome she was under. So... she was in an egg? Well, she had been a phoenix. Was a phoenix? She couldn't really see herself in here but she had slimy hair trying to get into her mouth, and she didn't think that could be feathers.

"At least it's large enough she probably isn't going to emerge as an infant," said the Baron. Apparently this was his version of optimism. Annoying, but as his version of pessimism tended to involve sedatives and/or overwhelming military force, Agatha decided she'd take it. 

"It might be about the right size for a phoenix chick, though," Zeetha offered, rather unhelpfully. 

"Yes, but _we_ all changed back...."

Agatha considered shouting at them, but she wasn't sure she could keep her mouth clear long enough. The egg was large enough that her feet weren't even encountering the walls, which was better than not having space to move or more importantly breathe, but could become a problem in terms of leverage. She spat out hair (she was pretty sure that was hair) and got a hand up (yes! that was definitely a hand! welcome back, hands) to drag the rest of it away from her face. 

Then, to try to get a feel for the dimensions, she filled her lungs and straightened her legs.

It was big enough that she hadn't been touching the sides lengthwise, but when she pushed out across it her feet met shell. She braced her hands on the opposite side, feeling them slip around, and continued to push. Something gave under one foot, and she swam back up to the top to gulp air before diving again the other way around to pull at the new hole with her hands. Someone exclaimed, the sound muffled and echoing, and suddenly more pairs of hands were pushing into the hole and helping to widen it, the slime rushing past Agatha until she could breathe again.

She stumbled out, feet slipping, possibly the most unglamorous arrival in the history of Mechanicsburg. Zeetha crowed in triumph, and she and Gil and Tarvek all immediately hugged her. Agatha blinked gunk out of her eyes in time to spot the Baron backing away hastily. Agatha hugged back as well as she could manage with three people. "I'm getting gunk all over you, you know."

"Worth it," said Gil. "Especially since you're not a baby phoenix... not that that wouldn't have been cute."

"That would have been _awkward_ ," said Agatha. "How long are they supposed to take to grow up?"

Everyone looked at the Baron. " _I_ don't know," he said.

"And just when you were starting to seem like an expert," Agatha said cheerfully. "Ugh, I need a bath. I think I'm lucky I didn't drown in there."

"Pff. We figured you'd hatch when you were ready," Zeetha said. "We weren't going to break it open early in case you weren't finished."

Agatha paused. "Finished doing what?"

"Who knows? Turning back from a bird. Being on fire."

"I wasn't on fire. I was fire."

"...See, that could also have been a problem."

Agatha shook her head and raked her hair back, looking forward to getting it clean, before looking at the dome she'd just emerged from, now somewhat deflated thanks to her breaking out through the side. "What am I going to do with a giant eggshell?" she asked.

"I could propose a list of tests if you don't think you have a comprehensive set in mind," said the Baron.

"After my bath," Agatha decided. "Castle, I want a bathtub full of hot water by the time I get there."

"Certainly, my lady. Welcome back."

"Thanks. The rest of you, um...." Obviously Gil and Tarvek were invited, but. She looked at the Baron and DuPree. "You're welcome to come in, get cleaned up, have something to eat that isn't an elephant...."

"There is an elephant available in the--" the Castle began.

"She means we've had enough elephant!" Tarvek said hastily. "But thanks anyway. You could probably make art with the egg," he added. "It's really pretty."

Agatha glanced back at it. It _was_ pretty when she wasn't inside it. In the sunlight the ivory had overtones of rose and gold, and if she tried to trace them she thought there were subtle flame patterns. "Hm. Maybe I will."

"It was a pretty egg," the Baron said, in a tone that suggested it was a concession. "Although Gil and Zeetha's was cuter."

Everyone except him and Zeetha stopped walking. " _What?!_ "

* * *


End file.
